I'll give Jack the benefit of the doubt that he's not a sock puppet, and point out that it was him who introduced the writing of Bob Whitaker into the discussion. A cursory reading of Whitaker's website reveals his "white supremacist" leanings.

It's not all that surprising that someone who perceives a conspiracy among "leftist university professors" to "bring down the west" would be indifferent to the white supremacist ravings of one of his heroes.

Well, pickle my herring and call me Sven. Actually Jack, I do not yell "fascist" or "Nazi" at all, I leave that to the hippies and shrill nutbags. But Robert Whitaker is a self-confessed, shall we say, "racially aware" person.
http://www.natall.com/adv/2004/07-03-04.html

You are right about one thing though, the future of our language is not in my hands, but neither is it in yours or any other individuals and I take heart in that.

I'll also give you a freebie: http://lolstika.ytmnd.com/

I'll leave loldongs up to you to work out for yourself and give you another one, lulzcow.

TurnRightTurnLeft, I was aware of the meaning of the acronym, LOL, it was when additions were made that I was puzzled. I still don’t know what LOLDONGS means (though I made a guess in an earlier post).
I don’t see how you relate the Swastika to paranoia. It is an ancient Indo-European symbol for the sun-wheel. The symbol was adopted and modified by the Nazis, not invented by them.
I am convinced that the backward slide of education exists, especially when I compare my education with that of my sons. You are correct that today’s youth is more adept as using up-to-date-technology than I am but what would they do if it all broke down? If my calculator stopped working, I could revert to my slide-rule and my book of logarithmic tables. Could any of today’s students? This, again, is symbolic of the ‘dumbing-down’ of our children that is already evident in their grammar and spelling deficiencies. It’s so bad that there are now reports of teachers who can’t spell. If that’s change, I certainly fear for our youth.

CJ, it depends who reads Whitaker’s site as to how it is labelled. To a leftist, it is indeed a ‘white supremacist’ site. Although biased towards Whites, to me, it is a site that seeks balance. Over the last few years we have seen the rise of ‘reverse-racism’, where instead of some sort of reconciliation, the non-white races want to take it to the opposite extreme where the Whites will be at the bottom. This is evident in ‘affirmative action’, ‘Black Pride’ movements etc. The way I read Whitaker’s site was that he was trying to point out how discriminatory some institutions now were against Whites and, hopefully, equalise the playing field.
I’m not dismissing what was done in the past but turning the tables completely will just open another ‘can of worms’.
I hadn’t mentioned his website, only his book which does not use race or ‘White supremacy’ at all but does criticise leftist and Politically Correct policies.

I’ve had a hard enough time with the new acronyms so what’s a ‘sock puppet’? Not another text message? :-^

OK Sven, I’m glad you’re not a hippy. I liked your ‘LOLSTIKA’ link. Did you do that yourself? I thought the music was a bit weak though.
I’ve tried Googling (a new tech word) LOLDONGS and LULZCOW but arrive at some weird websites. Can’t you put me out of my misery? Do you know their meanings?
Also, your link, http://www.natall.com/adv/2004/07-03-04.html, was very good and, if read with an open mind, is supportive to my views.

It's all well and good to describe it as 'dumbing down' but that doesn't take into account that the youth are far more proficient with new technologies than those who came before them.

Everyone likes to speak about the dumbing down in education, and to an extent I agree with some of the concern regarding literacy especially.

What bothers me, is those who are denigrating educational standards don't take into account the many new disciplines being learned - be they technological or advances in the sciences. You speak of logarithmic tables, but look in any year 12 extension mathematics class, and you will find that thanks to the use of programmable calculators, they are tackling mathematics that is far more complex than it was many years ago.

You acknowledge the youth are more skilled in using technology, yet you give them no credit for it whatsoever - it is this use of technology that is going to be far more useful than slide rules.

It's well and good to say if their computers failed they'd be in trouble. To that I'd say, the older generation would be in trouble if they were put in a computer lab and told to get cracking with computer programming or communications.

And this latter scenario is far more practical and far more likely than a sudden need requirement to go back to slide rules.

Educational standards are indeed changing - but it's not all backward. It just seems that way to those who aren't making the same adaptations.

TurnRightTurnLeft, I note that you are concerned with the decline of literacy (from whence this thread evolved), but proficiency with new technology is not the same as understanding the guts and bones of it.

While many new disciplines are being learned, a lot are next to useless. A local school has lately become specialised in ‘the performing arts’. That’ll look good on someone’s resume when applying for a technical position somewhere. I can’t vouch for year 12 maths as I left school at 16 but, by then, we were performing differential calculus and learning to apply it to physics. Again the maths that today’s youth is tackling is, by your own admission, made possible by the use of programmable calculators. Seems to me they are more operators than mathematicians if they are just plugging figures etc into their hand-held computers.

I’m sure that if the younger generation were put in a computer lab and told to get cracking with computer programming, the majority would be struggling as most are skilled as operators, not programmers. I’ve seen it as ex-computer gamers were able to grasp radar operation quickly but had a hard time with the theory.

As for a sudden requirement to go back to older ways, many so-called ‘doomsday scenarios’ have loss of power as a factor. It would be crazy to think that could never happen. We should prepare for every plausible scenario.

BTW, I don’t fear change – I have been through two major career changes and kept up each time. So I don’t fit your accusation of paranoia and fear of change, do I?

And you still haven’t clarified your link between swastika and paranoia.